And as I have often said, the first things to go (after I double-cross the ‘iron fist’) will be anything and EVERYTHING to do with the game of golf, most especially the clothing – polo shirts will be banned for the next millenia, and hawaii shirts (great state, horrible clothing design, that. Crazy Shirts are more than adequate)!
candybowl
Was reading an interview with Nathan Fillion the other day in which he confessed to being a big sci-fi and comic fan – Of course he’s well known for being in Firefly, but often as not, actors in sci-fi stuff aren’t necessarily fans of the genre. But he mentioned he did voice acting in a new Justice League cartoon – Justice League: Doom.
Naturally I was interested, as some of my favorite (and completely ridiculous in most cases) cartoons from kid days included Challenge of the Superfriends – where they battled the Legion of Doom every week (and of course usually won, with the Legion escaping at the last minute every week to start trouble the following Saturday – amazing how job security works in the superhero world). You can watch nearly all of the COSF episodes on YouTube these days if you are interested.
Anyway, so I got the DVD from Scarecrow and watched it. I liked it, and I think you will too – but there are some aspects I think they could have done better. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT from here on out – stop now and watch before reading further!
1) So first – This group of the Justice League has the usual players (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash) plus a few others (Green Lantern – not always a member in my memory; some weird guy named Martian Manhunter, and another guy named Cyborg (who ends up a member by the end of the show). The Legion has a completely different ‘cast’ than in the past, save only Cheetah, the longtime nemesis of Wonder Woman. I was not familiar with any of the others – none of them were in the ‘old’ Superfriends-Legion of Doom ‘competition’. And where’s Aquaman?
2) So there were some weird (and interesting) changes for the JLA here – apparently Wonder Woman can now fly – when did that start? And Green Lantern can now be rendered nearly useless through the powerful use of ‘guilt’ (more on that below)?
Batman here follows the currently popular ‘true vigilante’ profile of him seen in the recent Batman movies and the less recent Frank Miller Dark Knight series – he’s in it for real, he doesn’t f around, and woe to anyone who gets in his way (friend or foe, doesn’t matter). For being one of the perennially most popular and known comic book heroes out there (and for putting up with as many cheesy portraits of him as have been done – you know who you are) – I have to say this Batman is the bad-ass he should always have been, and it works very well.
3) The Legion of Doom yet again has the Hall of Doom based in a swamp, although it apparently doesn’t fly around and save their bacon at the end like before. Still though, it was cool to see it back. Far cooler in many ways than most of the JLA’s tech, to be sure, and definitely has some evil ‘style’ to it.
4) So the plot in a nutshell – the JLA breaks up a weird museum robbery with some wacky high-tech gang with costumes and names based on a deck of cards (yes, I’m not kidding) But they determine that the gang couldn’t have come up with such tech, so they start seeking its source – ultimately leading them to the Legion. The leader of the Legion turns out to be a man named Vandal Savage, who is apparently immortal and has been biding his time to take over the world, but first he must get the JLA (and half or more of the Earth’s population) out of the way via a horrible solar flare bomb). So each member of the Legion ultimately turns out to be a personal nemesis of each member of the JLA, and they naturally trap or seemingly waylay each member in turn after stealing valuable data from Batman’s computer on how to do it.
While the mad scheme is on the verge of execution, the JLA shows up to save the day, and after a series of battles and related mayhem, they do. But it ends on an interesting note. Earlier the JLA found out that Batman had been tracking all of them in terms of how to take each of them out were they to go against the cause of good. The others are pretty po’d about this and have a vote to boot him out of the JLA – but he’s allowed to speak in his own defense – he says basically that any/all of them should have been doing the same thing, and that if they aren’t realistic about that happening (one or more JLA member going AWOL) then he offiically quits – he then leaves the room. Superman comes into the room before Batman is about to leave a few minutes later and says they didn’t vote him out, but still give him crap about what he did – Batman pretty much gives him the hardnosed response but they end up allies as it ends, just like before. Bad. Ass.
5) I was disappointed to not see any of the other classic Superfriends villains here – ‘Metallo’ is apparently now Superman’s nemesis – not Lex Luthor? Come on. LL was the ultimate villain – more ego than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney combined, and always ready to destroy everything, sometimes even to his own detriment. Like The Repugnicans when they get in power – he usually way overreaches and has to be smacked down. At least Metallo was smart enough to pack Kryptonite in a bullet and shoot Superman right where it counts, from which he almost doesn’t make it.
Batman’s nemesis Bane seems tough (and seems to be able to get bigger on demand by sucking in more ‘blood fluid’ from some pack on his back) – but like all fatally flawed villain power packs, once Batman notices this, he severs the tubes and Bane shrinks back down and snivels on the ground like a loser.
Star Sapphire, as mentioned before, besides having some sort of blue lasers to combat Green Lantern’s green lasers, gets inside his head and turns him into a crying baby until Batman (who else) all but smacks him out of it.
6) One key factor in the old COSF was the constant barrage of ridiculous insults used by the Legion (in addition to whatever zany scheme they had cooked up) against the SuperFriends. While they never seemed to do much more than prompt some ‘holy ___, Batman!’ statement from Robin in most cases – they were hilarious – and sorely missed here. Plus had they used them here, it might have made Batman even madder (assuming that was even possible) and that could have been badass too 🙂
Will we see the Legion again? Well, they locked everyone up good this time by the end (big surprise) but never count a good villain, comic writer/artist, or money-seeking comic syndicate out – I suspect we haven’t seen the last of them…muhahhaha!
candybowl
Saw The Adventures of TinTin last night. While it plays like ‘Indiana Jones meets Wallace and Gromit‘ (with a side dose of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea) it’s great fun. The animation is nothing short of amazing – Note to Pixar: the bar has been raised, and for once, not by you. Jamie Bell‘s voice kept making me think he was Elijah Wood (kerewin disagreed) and it was nice to see Andy Serkis get a role for once that wasn’t a weird creature (Gollum) or an ape, or some other character using a CGI overlay from his facial and body acting – he is a great actor, period, and the dual Haddock role shows it.
The other nice thing about this movie is its period setting – there’s enough technology that people aren’t running around completely on horseback (cars, motorboats, etc. all exist) yet there’s still plenty of excitement – that’s definitely the first ‘container crane sword battle’ I’ve ever seen, for sure.
And these stories are tailor-made for Hollywood – If the next one does as well as this one (note to makers, follow the Harry Potter and LOTR franchises for lessons on keeping up the quality) – there should be several more TinTin movies before they’re done….You can’t help wondering though how much Spielberg and Lucas (among others) were influenced by Hergé when they began making movies – TinTin’s adventures predate Indiana Jones by many decades….
candybowl
Give rise to MUPPET Wicker Man! Based on the original 1973 movie, of course, NOT the craptastically horrible nic Cage remake (NO link will be provided to that one!)
The online MWM comic is here: link
the ‘trailer’ is here:
enjoy!
candybowl
I rewatched TRON: Legacy yesterday. While my original reactions largely still stand, I’ve begun looking into a fan fiction project around this. It would seem I’m not the only one working on TRON stuff – here’s a 10 minute short they must have done as they filmed TRON: Legacy, and a teaser trailer that was apparently included in the Blu-Ray edition. Finally, as apparently they are working on an animated TRON television series TRON: Uprising – here’s a trailer for that too.
candybowl
TRON: The Next Day
Dillinger easter egg:
TRON:Uprising
So I finally read the Gibson short story Johnny Mnemonic this past week, and as I had never seen the movie, thought i’d get that too. Hmmmm…not so much. While the short story is set in the Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive ‘universe’ of cyberpunk and The Sprawl – the movie just falls flat. The director and Gibson himself (screenwriter) changed too many elements (IMHO) of the original – apparently Molly Millions was changed to ‘Jane’ due to someone else’s ownership rights, but the whole NAS thing is silly – the short story is just much more taut and effective. The movie has many sequences that either lack dialog (where it’s needed) or have oddball distractions that don’t add to the plot, and the pacing of the movie isn’t very good, either. Too many slow parts that could have been edited out, and the action sequences are fairly clumsy, too..
A few interesting things I noticed, however. The LoTek clan’s hideout is on a burned out suspension bridge from Newark – echoes of his first Bridge Trilogy book Virtual Light (which had come out two years before this movie in 1993, although the ‘bridge’ in that trilogy was the Golden Gate Bridge in SF)?
Also, the look and feel crib (or steal, depending on your perspective) VERY HEAVILY from Max Headroom in a multitude of ways. Astute cyberpunk fans could say that MH in turn stole from (or was certainly inspired by) Gibson himself, given that his first two cyberpunk books, Neuromancer and Count Zero, appeared before MH debuted. It’s likely a tossup either way. The ‘wasteland future’ look here might also have been influenced by the even earlier Escape from New York, too.
Johnny’s overloaded ‘head of data’ – billed as 120GB but ‘stuffed overfull’ at 320 GB – seems quaint at best now, given you can buy a TB-sized USB drive at Fry’s for around $150 these days.
It’s interesting to think that while this movie was a failure, Keanu would be back in cyberspace MUCH more successfully only a few years later as Neo in The Matrix.
Finally – the depiction of ‘The Internet’ as conceptualized by the Neuromancer series was thought for a long time the way we’d browse – sadly didn’t turn out that way, despite similar thinking as seen in say, The Lawnmower Man.
So read the story – skip the movie.
candybowl
Finished watching Redline tonight. This is probably the craziest anime, (possibly movie), I have ever seen.
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of ‘racing anime’ – although among the various types of anime out there – it is comparatively rare, and I’ve pretty much seen all of them (Initial D, Wangan Midnight, IGPX, etc.), save for re-watching Speed Racer all over again, which I still may do someday (the 2008 live-action Speed Racer movie, however – that’s a great flick – see previous post here). Common elements include the racing itself, which of course in anime means over-the-top posturing and ego clashes from nearly every character at some point or another if not constantly; technology can play a factor (IGPX being the anime-futuro-mecha version of team racing, not terribly unlike the Kinetica videogame on PS2) and illegal street racing, whether in town/highways (Wangan Midnight) or crazy steep mountain/cliffside roads (Initial D).
So Redline takes nearly all these elements in one form or another and goes one better – it is a series of increasingly challenging elimination races (Blueline, followed by Yellowline, then the ultimate final race with the cream of the competitors: Redline) that are held on various alien worlds across varied and unknown terrain, not always including actual roads. Because (of course) some of the vehicles used are hover-jet/rocket/cars (think of the hover-car/bike race in The Phantom Menace) and because nearly all the cars (even those relying on wheels) have some sort of rocket/nitro boost in them, among other abilities (The Mach 5 would be sadly outclassed here, I think).
So the story follows a few key racers as they make it past a Yellowline race (already in progress at the start of the movie) and gain entry to the Redline final race (the third act of the movie is that race). Unexpected plot elements include the ‘roboworld’ planet where Redline is to be held – doesn’t want the race to be held on their planet, and so does everything they can (including armies, space weaponry and bio-weapons) to stop the race and kill all the racers if possible. Also JP (one of the main characters) has a shady past (unlike nearly every other racer who has a ‘shady present’) and is known for ‘fixing’ races, for which he was sent to prison at least once.
The plot is otherwise fairly straight forward, about what you’d expect in a racing movie/anime, save for the following:
First – it is completely hand-drawn animation. No CGI. Which is probably in part why it took seven years(!) to make. The results are VERY impressive, although in many racing sequences the action is so crazy-chaotic it can be hard to figure out what is going on. They make use of every frame in this movie to excess, and it shows.
I would have to describe the visual style of the movie as ‘Roy Lichtenstein vs. Aeon Flux‘ with a not-completely-subtle dash of Wacky Races thrown in for good measure. JP looks almost as if he walked right out of an Aeon Flux episode, and he’s not the only one. The stark color contrasts seen here really stand out (hence the Lichtenstein impression) with an incredible level of detail not normally seen in an anime (or most animation generally). The ridiculous cast of racers *has* to have been influenced by Wacky Races, and the later IGPX, I’m sure – they are a total collection of freaks and misfits.
What passes for character development here is the second act, where the various racers prepare for the Redline race and have at least a few scenes of conversation here and there. Sadly, there is a bit of gratuitous nudity thrown in (for no apparent reason) and there was some random profanity at points in the movie (I watched in Japanese with subtitles but it may have also made it into the dubbed version) which, taken together with some of the extreme action and character design, probably make this movie NOT suitable for kids – i’d rate it a PG-13.
But it’s definitely a very well-made, beautifully animated movie and if you like anime, worth seeing for that reason alone – they set a pretty high bar. One of the few anime I’ve seen that equal this movie’s animation quality would be Appleseed – but that movie has a *lot* of CGI mixed in with the traditional animation, so not really the same thing.
Check it out! Again I got it from Scarecrow but Amazon now carries it too if you don’t live in Seattle.
Other Redline reviews:
Anime News Network
Notaku Blog
candybowl
After all the monster movies I’ve seen over the years (many multiple times – after all, WWGZD?) I finally got around to watching the original Rodan movie yesterday. They reissued it on DVD with both the original Japanese version (english subtitles) and the dubbed American version and conveniently, the SPL had it.
My review here is going to be short – simply stated, there wasn’t near enough monster/destruction/mayhem! So rather than try to write more words about too little action – I give you a far better Rodan review (word and wit-wise) courtesy of Stomp Tokyo! Other reviews by these maniacs are linked off the blogroll on the lower left. Enjoy!
candybowl
Well, as the saying goes, all good things (must?) come to an end. And so it is with the ‘Clone’ series of books. I have now read each book in the series at least twice, a couple of the early ones probably three times. (earlier posts on this series are here and here.) Just finished the second reading of the final book: The Clone Redemption, which came out in late Oct. of this year (had been waiting several months for it eagerly). How did it come out? Let’s discuss. I will try to talk about this book in light of past plots and also try not to give things away, but can’t guarantee anything :).
So first and foremost, i was glad to see the Japanese Fleet and SEALs get their due. While this is probably the bleakest book of the entire series for many reasons, the SEALs and Japanese fate was met with strength, dignity and a couple interesting twists (e.g. the encounter with the shipboard Yakuza contingent) that served to bring more humanity to these mysterious characters. In earlier books we had only really seen Master Chief Illych for any significant time, so this gave us a chance to see at least a couple more in a bit more detail, which was nice. And it was also interesting to see the inner workings of the Japanese command staff and its fleet more than before.
The Unified Authority, true to form over the past few books, defies belief in its ability to sink ever ‘lower’, both morally and in the various battles where they show up. While we don’t see anymore of the previous fleet commander(s) that bedeviled Harris (and occasionally Freeman) in the past, their own ‘evil’ boss, Tobias Andropov, head of the planetary Linear Committee, makes his own presence felt by implication several times and then directly at least once.
The scientists Breeze and Sweetwater provide an ultimately bittersweet but necessary ‘conscience’ to the story in some ways, and while they may have ended up being subtle manipulations of the U.A. against Harris and the clones, they help him enormously in spite of this, and that’s definitely a good thing.
Which brings us to Harris and Freeman. I think the former does even more maturing as a person in this book, especially given its increasingly bleak morality play as the plot continues to the end – but he’s still got a ways to go (the interlude(s) with Ava G. and the continued soul-searching around saving natural-borns that otherwise would prefer him and the other clones dead are proof of that) and he knows it. Freeman actually becomes much more of a ‘human’ in this book vs. the past books. Like before, we largely see him through Harris’ eyes and perspective, so aside from his actions and (still very few) words, he’s still very much an enigma, but he lets down his guard (and in some ways, semmingly his will to continue living at all) at points in this story, and it’s a bit weird to consider.
So some quibbles. I liked this book, and very much enjoyed the entire series, but would have liked a bit more of:
1) Avatari back story. We see what happens here (mostly) but if there was a story component even MORE of an enigma than Freeman, it’s the Avatari. Maybe just providing more text from the Morgan Atkins Bible at some point earlier would have been sufficient, I don’t know – but it would surely have been interesting to learn.
2) Did the ‘sleeves’ on the various human colonies persist post-Avatari? If there are other future books, that might be interesting to explore.
3) As noted to the author in an earlier discussion on the SadSamsPalace blog last year – what about that secret Mogat base in DC discussed several books ago? It never comes up here for obvious reasons – but maybe there are more Avatari clues there?
4) Finally – when will Harris have his ‘say’ in front of Congress, the Linear Committee and others who ultimately betrayed humanity via banishing the clones and taking control of the U.A. the way they did – when will the truth come out? I guess this is future book material too?
What might be an interesting next step here – instead of say, another book series or simply another sequel – might be to take an ‘art’ or ‘major events’ timeline approach. I’m thinking here of past Chris Foss-illustrated books like the old Spacecraft, 2000-2100 A.D.: Terran Trade Authority Handbook. Those books were largely a vehicle for putting out an art book – AFAIK, they made up the stories to explain the paintings therein – for the most part it works, although in the later Great Space Battles they get a bit too far afield (the painting of a giant ‘space cereberus’ is simply too silly to take seriously).
But with a pre-written and far more cohesive narrative like the Clone books, this approach could be pretty cool – the author could go back in time across the entire series and fill in/retell details he had to leave out first time around (due to space, editing, deadlines, etc.) – and – you get the chance to enlist some artists to ‘visualize’ some of these events too? Certainly the ‘destruction of the Doctrinaire’ would be a great one, as maybe the first encounter of Morgan Atkins’ science team with the Avatari? I could see a smiling portrait of Sweetwater, Breeze and Freeman presenting to the U.A. command ‘rabble’ during the battle gaps while fighting the Avatari on Terraneau, etc.
Another example of such an ‘external’ book to tell related stories and details would be the (also originally from the 70s) Starfleet Technical Manual describing the Star Trek universe. In any event, there are a lot of possibilities.
To sum up, I liked the series very much, there were a few things I quibbled with here and there, and of course hated waiting months between books (not much you can do about that one – when you write them all at once you can definitely end up with a horrible third story and beyond – ask The Matrix :)). Quality demands time, despite our lack of patience as readers.
candybowl
Again with the sci-fi movie series, eh? So (now) having seen all four of them (not talking about Alien vs. Predator, which I have also unfortunately seen) I can truly say that only the first two are worth watching. Alien (from way back in 1979 – Black Hole vintage) was a great horror story in space, and has lots of (now) famous actors in it, including Tom Skerrit, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt and of course Sigourney Weaver (ultimately the star of all the movies). The somewhat obscure (at the time) bio-mechanoid H.R. Giger art and set design really made Alien a unique movie – and with Dan O’Bannon as a key writer plus Ridley Scott as director (this was several years before Blade Runner) were a great combination.
Aliens, the next movie, was directed by James Cameron and took a different tack to turn the saga into an action movie, this time including Michael Biehn (Terminator alum and regular Cameron movie actor). Here, Ripley gets to be a badass and save the day again, despite a squadron of Marines sent to ‘protect’ her and Paul Reiser (who plays a great corporate douchebag, and thankfully ‘gets his’ from the aliens themselves – ha!). And who can forget the classic “game OVER, man!” from Bill Paxton? One of his classic goofy movie roles.
Alien3 was pretty bad. interesting premise (Ripley, Hicks and Newt’s ship is diverted somehow to a prison colony but only Ripley survives the crash – Lance Henrikson shows up again now as the scientist trying to continue the research on the aliens but Ripley ends up as the ‘Christ figure’ and kills herself to thwart him). Interestingly enough, Wired has an article on David Fincher (the director) this month, where he’s still fairly pained about the whole experience – it’s safe to say that the low quality of the movie upon release is probably not his fault based on this article.
Which brings us to Alien (4): Resurrection. Pretty simple plot – yet *again* the ‘Company’ is trying to do experimental research on the aliens (they just can’t learn that lesson, can they?) but this time they are also using clones of Ripley to incubate the alien babies as their hosts. They also seem to be trying to ‘meld’ Ripley WITH the aliens along the way, as she finds out later. A ship of baddies arrives at the military research ship where all this ‘research’ is being conducted – but then when Ron Perlman gets his face popped by Ripley after being a smartass – someone gets trigger happy and the baddies effectively kill most of the guards. However, only Winona Ryder knows about the aliens onboard and what’s really going on – and that Ripley is a clone (200 years have apparently passed since the original Ripley died on that prison planet, after all). So then we go into lengthy chase/confrontation scenes where we find out WR is a robot (remember Ash from the first movie and Bishop from the second? Same deal). We also find out that one of the objectives of the alien research was to allow the alien to have live babies(?) instead of laying all those eggs with face-huggers in them – wtf? After all this useless/?? plot tedium that kills about 45 minutes, the survivors almost get away in the smaller ship only to have an alien on board (again) but manage to kick it out the airlock (again) and then see a sunrise on earth, where the movie ends.
So, while the movie wasn’t near as cheesy as ST:Insurrection – it lacked nearly any original plot and many moments of WTF all over the place – I like many of Joss Whedon‘s writing creations, most notably Firefly/Serenity, but he’s really grasping at straws here (and drowns in the process). He doesn’t include enough plot to make it more a straight horror movie like the first one (and really, now having had 3 previous movies, how could you build onscreen terror in that sense anyway?) nor any real interesting action sequences that even come close to matching the second one. We’ll just politely ignore the third movie altogether. 🙂 And most of the dialog is pretty throwaway too – save the new ‘malevolent’ Ripley, who as a clone with alien blood had a much darker tone and personality than her original – but they never really explore it to any degree, the most she ever says at once is maybe a sentence?
Oh well….
candybowl
